Sunday 29 April 2012

The Shape of DVDs to Come

I don't buy a lot of merchandise. Mainly because there is now so much of it that I simply couldn't afford a fraction of it. I don't buy the BF audios, or the BBC books.
I will buy non-fiction books though - such as the Encyclopaedia and the Brilliant Books of  2011 & 12.(Shame there won't be one this year unless it has about 3 episodes worth of stuff in it).
I have bought every issue of Doctor Who Magazine  since it was humble Doctor Who Weekly in 1979.
I have only a handful of Character Options 7 inch figures (a Tennant, a Zygon, a Sea Devil, the first Dalek collection and the first Cybermen collection).
I don't plan on buying any more - except when they finally get round to doing a Rory figure. Not sure I will purchase all the body-warmer variants though...

Something else I have always bought are the Classic DVDs. How can you possibly call yourself a fan if you don't actually go out and buy the episodes - to watch as often as you like?
I owned every VHS version, and have been slowly replacing these over the years with the shiny DVD releases.
As we near the 50th Anniversary, so we near the end of the DVD release schedule. I am sure that there will be more Special Editions / Revisitations box sets, but 2013 should see the final stories being issued. (At least we were promised that everything would be out by 2013, but I have seen recent signs of backtracking in some interviews. This may be due to the time and cost of completing the stories which are incomplete in some way).
Of course, the releases might continue for a while - if missing episodes continue to pop up as they do once every 10 years or so.

So what is still left to be released?
The next UK release on 7th May is the Ace Box Set - comprising Dragonfire and The Happiness Patrol. Then on 18th June comes Death to the Daleks. Next after that, sometime in July, should be The Krotons (it has had its extras passed by the BBFC, and the American DVD cover is already to be found if you Google Image it).
Thereafter, things are less certain. Releases promised for 2012 include:


                                                               The Planet of Giants


                                              
                                            The Reign of Terror (with animated parts 4 & 5)


                                                 A Special Edition of Vengeance on Varos




             The incomplete Shada, packaged with the More Than 30 Years in the Tardis documentary.

That will leave the following for 2013 - or later if any missing episodes need to be animated, or missing colour restored.


                                                     The Mind of Evil (requires colouring)


                                           The Ambassadors of Death (requires colouring)


                                              The Tenth Planet (Episode 4 famously missing)


                              The Ice Warriors (Episodes 2 & 3 not quite so famously missing)


                                                     The Greatest Show In The Galaxy




                                            Terror of the Zygons (CGI Skarasen please, Santa)

WE also have to consider the release of the two episodes that were found back in December - Episode 3 of Galaxy 4 (Airlock) and Episode 2 of The Underwater Menace. Unless an updated "Lost in Time" set is being planned, these episodes will need to find a home on one of the above releases. There is no mention of Underwater Menace 2 as an extra on The Krotons release, so we can safely assume it might find its way onto The Ice Warriors. Airlock has a choice of 3 releases to go with. Probably not the animated Reign of Terror, or the sure to be animated The Tenth Planet - so possibly Planet of Giants?


If not on one of these releases, there could still be a miscellaneous DVD collection of all the bits left over from other releases - comedy sketches, news items, home movie footage etc. A couple of proper episodes would make this more commercially viable.

After all this time, I look forward to finally completing the collection. I do not look forward to the day when a new format comes along that means they start the whole blooming process all over again...

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